Wild Embrace (12 page)

Dorian lay stunned
next to the fire with Shaya. He had his head in his mate's lap and she was using a comb on his damp hair. He'd just have thrust his fingers through the white-blond strands and left it after he took a dip in the nearby stream, but Shaya had offered and he liked it when she petted him, so he was happy to lie here looking up at the brilliant stars above.

“I shifted,” he said, not quite able to believe he'd run through the forest on four feet, the wind rippling through his fur.

“You were beautiful,” Shaya told him again, her own joy a vibrant pulse along the mating bond that linked their hearts to one another. “And so cute.”

“Hey.” He growled, grabbing her hand to nip playfully at it. “I am a DarkRiver sentinel. We aren't cute.”

Laughing, she bent down and kissed him, her tight curls electric with energy around them. “How about adorable?” she teased before going back to her combing of his hair, the rhythmic motion making him feel lazy and cherished both. “What was it like? When you first found yourself on four feet?”

“Disorienting,” he said, thinking of that first shock after Shaya's gene therapy had taken sudden, unexpected effect. “You have no idea how difficult it is to coordinate four paws at one time.”

Smile luminous, Shaya put aside the comb and placed one hand on his bare chest, playing with his hair with the other. “I've seen the cubs,” she said. “No wonder they're always tumbling.”

“Yeah.” He felt like a cub himself, was conscious he had so much more to learn. But one thing he knew beyond doubt: “Your voice, telling me to trust the leopard to know what to do—that's what I needed to hear.” All his life, he'd fought to control his leopard, to restrain it so it wouldn't claw him bloody in its frustration, wouldn't drive him insane.

That discipline had given him a life and a strong, trusted position in the pack, but in that moment after the shift, it had also left him alone and lost. “My leopard was waiting, ready,” he said to Shaya, wonder bright in him. “As soon as I surrendered to it, I understood how I needed to balance, how my body was meant to move.” He shuddered out a breath at the glorious memory of freedom. “I know I'm not anywhere near graceful yet, but I don't care. It feels incredible.”

“I know.” It was a whisper, Shaya's eyes shining wet in the firelight. “I could feel your joy through our bond.”

Lifting her hand to his mouth again, he pressed his lips to her palm, drawing in the lush, sensual scent of her. Of his smart, sexy, beautiful mate. “I didn't spend my life feeling sorry for myself,” he said, thinking of the years past. “I became the best I could be, and then I pushed myself even harder.”

His packmates teased him affectionately about his overachieving tendencies, but that drive was all that had kept him together for a long time. Then, it had simply become part of him. “But it hurt,” he said, admitting his vulnerability to the woman who held his heart—and who already understood his pain. “Deep inside me, so deep down that I almost forgot it at times, it always hurt.

“I want to say it felt like a piece of me was missing, but that isn't true. It was worse than that. It was feeling that piece trapped inside
me, feeling as if I was betraying my leopard every day of our existence.” He swallowed. “I wouldn't have blamed my cat if it never forgave me, but it does, Shaya. It
does
.”

“Of course it does. You're not two separate beings, Dorian, you're one.”

“Yeah.” He smiled because it was true. After a lifetime of being separated from his cat, he didn't have to fight it anymore. They could just be. Now that leopard rubbed against the inside of his skin, as excited as he was, as happy. Its emotions were wilder than his own, its mind thinking in far simpler patterns. “The cat doesn't see the point in worrying about the past.”

Shifting off Shaya's lap on those words, he said, “Come lie with me.”

When she would've lain down on the picnic blanket beside him, he tugged her on top of his body. She was dressed in a plain white tank top and a pair of black boxers she'd stolen from him and that would've hung off her if she hadn't tightened the elastic. “Why aren't you naked?” he complained after slipping his hand into the back of the boxers to cup her gorgeous ass.

Nipping at his lower lip, she kicked up her legs after tucking her curls behind her ears in a futile effort to control them. “Because we have two tiny and very curious chaperones.”

He grinned. “They get to sleep okay?”

“Yeah. Fell asleep waiting for you.” Her blue-gray eyes danced. “Noor wants to brush you.”

His chest rumbled with laughter. “I have a feeling she'll get her way.” Their son's best friend was an adorable little cub who'd survived a terrible start to life with her sweetness and heart intact. “And Keenan?”

“He wants to go running with you.” Shaya kissed him again. “If you'd rather have some privacy to explore the leopard, I can—”

“No.” Stroking his hands up her back and under the tank top, he smiled. “The leopard wants to play with them, too.” Cubs were to be looked after, said the leopard, even if that meant being brushed by a sparkly pink hairbrush. “It needs to care for them . . . it's never had the chance to exercise that instinct.” And the instinct was a visceral one—Dorian had had it his entire life.

Shaya smiled. “You really should call Lucas back.”

His alpha had called soon after Dorian shifted for the first time. “What did he say?” Dorian asked.

“Just that he'd felt the urge to check up on you. I didn't want to steal your news, so I told him you were fine and would call him back.” She bit her lower lip. “That was a few hours ago.”

Blowing out a breath, Dorian nodded. “Right, where's the phone?” His alpha was worried, no doubt having sensed something staggering through the blood bond that linked all the sentinels to their alpha. If Dorian didn't get in touch, Luc might decide to come and check things out in person and Dorian wasn't ready for that.

He needed to settle into his new skin first.

“Here.” Shaya sat up and picked up the phone from another part of the blanket, the laz-fire turning her into a lush goddess above him, the rich brown of her skin glowing in the light.

Stroking her thighs, he just looked at her. “You're so pretty, Shaya.”

A lopsided smile. “Let me go check the babies are still asleep. Then maybe we can play a little.”

His body definitely liked that idea. Watching her walk away to duck into the tent, he sat up and blew out a breath before calling Lucas. “Hey, Luc, Shaya said you'd called.”

“You okay?” Lucas asked straight off. “I've been fighting the urge to find you all day, check on you.”

“Oh, jeez, Luc.” Dorian groaned. “I just got Shaya to agree to—”
He bit off his words as his mate came out of the tent and scowled at him.

Grinning, he said, “To play chess.”

Lucas snorted on the other end. “Yeah, I know that kind of chess,” he said with a grin in his voice. “You sure there's nothing I need to know?”

Dorian had never lied to his alpha. “There is something,” he said. “Nothing bad, but something I need to work out for myself first.”

A pause, before Lucas said, “All right. You know where I am when you're ready.”

Hanging up after a few more words, Dorian put aside the phone and watched Shaya come to him. “Hey,” he whispered before a wild craving tore through him.

Sharp concern in his mate's eyes. “Dorian?” She dropped to her knees beside him. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Just . . . change of plans.” Cupping her face as he held back the shift so he could speak to her, he said, “The leopard . . . it needs your touch.” And then he surrendered to the painful beauty and sheer joy of the shift, allowing the human part of him to recede into the background as the leopard took center stage.

The leopard he was folded its legs and put its head in Shaya's lap, its eyes closing as her hands stroked through its fur.

Peace sank into the bones of man and leopard both.

Three hours after
returning home from their camping trip, Dorian loitered in the trees outside his alpha's aerie. He didn't know quite how to tell Lucas, how to share the joy of what had happened. Any words seemed inadequate.

“Dorian?” Lucas landed on the forest floor in a smooth crouch, having jumped down from the aerie. He was dressed in jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, his feet bare.

Dorian shifted out of the trees. “Yeah, it's me.”

“Since when do you lurk?” His alpha walked over. “Come on up. Sascha's mak—” Lucas froze, his eyes turning panther in the space of a single heartbeat. Then he moved with alpha speed to capture Dorian's face between his hands.

Dorian felt his own leopard rise to the surface in response, knew his eyes were changing, his claws releasing. But the leopard stopped there, as if aware they both needed to be in this instant. The animal was as nervous as the man, though Dorian knew full well there was no cause for it—still, he felt like a cub for some reason . . . and then he knew why. This was the first time his leopard had come into direct contact with his alpha.

“Something?
” Lucas said, his lips starting to curve. “You describe this as
something
?”

Dorian shrugged a little sheepishly. “I didn't know how to say it.”

Laughing, Lucas wrapped his arms around his neck and hauled him close. Dorian went, returning the hug as fiercely as it was given. When he felt wet against his neck, he realized his alpha—his
friend
—was crying for joy for him. And damn, fuck, he was crying, too.

Drawing back, Lucas grabbed his face in his hands again, kissed him. It was hard, fleeting, and it held the power of the entire pack, Lucas's veins pulsing with the energy that was DarkRiver. And that energy spoke to his leopard, told it that it was home, that it was welcome, that there was no cause to fear.

“Damn it, Dorian,” Lucas said, slapping him lightly as they both laughed through the tears. “You fucking made me cry.”

“Better not let Hawke see you,” Dorian managed to get out. “You know that wolf would never let you forget it.”

“Like I care.” Stepping back, Lucas gave a single nod.

Dorian didn't know how he understood, but he did. Ignoring the fact that he didn't have spare clothes with him, he allowed the shift to take him over, his jeans and sweatshirt disintegrating off him as he became the leopard that was his other half. When it was over, he found himself face-to-face with a black panther with night-glow eyes.

Lifting a paw, Lucas patted the side of his face as he'd done in human form, except this was harder. Cat to cat. Alpha to sentinel. A rough welcome that made his cat's entire body vibrate with decades of withheld joy. When Lucas opened his mouth and growled, Dorian growled back.

Light sparked in the air, and then a man with black shoulder-length hair and green eyes, his skin muted gold, was crouching in front of him. “Well,” Lucas said with a grin, “thank God you're not a white-blond fucking leopard. We'd have had to dip you in mud before every operation.”

Snarling, Dorian head-butted his alpha and they sprawled to the ground. Where Lucas held up his hands, eyes bright with untrammeled happiness. “Want to go surprise the others? Let's see if they recognize you.”

Dorian snapped his teeth and nodded, his cat excited at the game.

In front of him, Lucas shifted, then ran over to climb up to his aerie. When he jumped back down, Dorian growled a greeting up at a wide-eyed Sascha. His alpha's mate waved at him, her lips curved in a dazzling smile. A second later, he was following his alpha carefully through the trees.

Lucas didn't go too fast, and when Dorian stumbled, he didn't baby him, just waited for him to get his feet back under him before they began to run again. They went first to his parents' house, and hell, there were a lot of tears there, too, a lot of hugs and petting. His mom called him “baby” again and, grabbing his leopard's face, smothered it in kisses.

The leopard, shameless creature, rubbed its cheek against her, a cub happy its parent was happy. It was the first time he'd seen such joy in his mother and father since they'd lost Kylie, and it meant everything. He'd already visited the pretty, sunny spot where he felt closest to his little sister, told her of the gift he'd been given.

I wish you were here, squirt. I'd finally be able to nip your butt when you got too sassy.

He'd heard his sister's cheeky laugh on the air, had almost felt her slender arms wrap around him as she laid her face against his chest.
I love you, Dori.
Only Kylie had ever dared to call him Dori, the habit formed as a toddler when she couldn't say his full name.

I love you, too, squirt.

Now, covered in the scent of family, he left his parents laughing and padded beside Lucas as they went hunting the other sentinels.
Mercy had come off a night shift and opened her door with a bad-tempered look on her face when they scratched on it. “Do you two know what ti—” Her bleary eyes focused and then she screamed in delight and jumped on Dorian, shifting midjump to roll with him onto the pine needles that carpeted the area outside her cabin.

Growling and nipping at him as they tumbled like pups, she kept patting his face as if to make certain he was really there. When she shifted back into human form, her red hair cascading down her back, tears streaked her face. “I'm leaking,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Because of you.”

Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tight.

By the time he met the rest of the sentinels, he'd been pounced on multiple times, each and every one of his packmates recognizing him on sight, though they'd never before seen his leopard. “It's the eyes and the scent,” Vaughn had said after knocking all the air out of Dorian with his enthusiastic welcome, the jaguar's heavier body having taken his inexperienced one to the earth a few minutes earlier. “You're still Dorian, just in a different skin.”

Yes.

Finally, he had the ability to live in both his skins, to be cat and to be human. But whatever shape he took, he thought as he returned home, he would always be DarkRiver . . . and he would always love Shaya and the little boy who was now his own.

Both were waiting for him at home, their identical eyes lighting up when he stepped into the room. Of all the gifts he'd been given, that was the biggest and most precious. Leopard and man, man and leopard, his mate and his child were his reason for living.